Another View on Facebook and Journalism

After reading Michael's post on how freedom of the press should be issued and how the government could take over, I began reading an article from the Center for Journalism Ethics of the University of Wisconsin Madison. This article mainly talked about the issues concerning offensive journalism and it had a relation to the discussion we had in class today. The article writer Sunny Dhillon included his views on Facebook, and I really wanted to find out if Facebook is indeed some sort of journalism. Sunny Dhillon says that "if we look at Facebook groups as advocacy journalism, as “journalism that advocates a cause or expresses a viewpoint,” often through non-objective means, then the idea isn’t quite so far-fetched." So in this case, the Facebook groups can be an act of journalism. For instance, a group fighting for Gay rights would be basically reporting on different issues that then turn into current events. Everyone on Facebook who chooses to join this group would then be getting a taste of news.

Do you find this sort of connection between Facebook and journalism? If not this connection, we surely did learn more information today from our guest speaker Mary in proportion to her job and how she basically promotes the Baltimore Sun's articles on Facebook and Twitter. What she does pretty much allows these such sites to sort of become a journalist website, along with the obvious fact that people's status's are citizen media.

What is your view on whether Facebook can be seen as a window to journalism with its millions of groups? The link to this article is available once you click on the title of this post.